2024-08-30 04:20:02
More than 500,000 fans have now watched Caitlin Clark’s record-shattering rookie season in person, setting a new attendance high for a WNBA team.
The Indiana Fever recently reported that 503,921 visitors have attended the team’s 31 home and away games this season, including 17,274 who watched the Fever beat the 22-8 Connecticut Sun 84-80 Wednesday night.
Among those at Gainbridge Fieldhouse were Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles and Gabby Thomas. Biles posted online that it was her first WNBA game—but that it wouldn’t be her last.
During the game, Clark also set the WNBA rookie record for three pointers, finishing the night with 88 on the year. She had 19 points, five rebounds and five assists in the victory.
After a slow start to the year, the Fever are now only one game below .500, with a marquee matchup against Angel Reese and the 11-19 Chicago Sky coming up Friday night. The cheapest ticket on Ticketmaster for the matchup at Chicago’s Wintrust Arena was roughly $150 as of Thursday morning.
The Fever were able to set the regular season attendance record with nine games to go in part because some opponents have moved their matchups into bigger venues. In July, the defending champion Las Vegas Aces drew 20,366 fans to T-Mobile Arena—the largest WNBA crowd in 25 years—when Clark came to town. In May, the New York Liberty set the WNBA record with $2 million in ticket revenue for a matchup with the Fever.
According to an analysis done in July, attendance at non-Fever WNBA games is also up nearly 20% this year.
“I think the buzz and just the eyes that Caitlin has brought from Iowa now to the WNBA is gonna be a collective win for all,” Liberty star and reigning WNBA MVP Breanna Stewart said at the time. “And now that she’s a part of our league … even though we’re competing against each other, we’re making sure that we’re continuing to lift up this league together. And I think that’s the most important thing.”
The Fever have also been breaking TV viewership records; the team set NBA TV’s WNBA game tune-in mark on Saturday against the Lynx, averaging 569,000 viewers, and they are likely to do the same on Ion Friday against the Sky. Clark’s All-Star debut averaged 3.44 million views on ABC, up nearly 150% over the previous high set on the network in 2003.
In June, Sportico valued the Indiana Fever as the sixth-most valuable WNBA franchise at $90 million, with $9.1 million in 2023 revenue. Before new national TV deals kick in, most team revenues are generated on the local level, with tickets driving a bulk of those earnings. Last year, the Fever had the second-lowest average home attendance in the WNBA with 4,067 tickets sold per game. The team released a financial report earlier this month detailing its 2024 success.
Indiana finishes the season in Washington on Sept. 19. That game has already been moved to Capital One Arena, where 20,333 fans showed up in June to see the rookie, the most fans since 2007 at the time.
“I’m just a kid that plays basketball and has a lot of fun,” Clark said after Wednesday’s game. “And for me, like, coming into these arenas and these environments, I look around, and it’s incredible. It really is.”
